Imagine you run a trucking company, and a 24-year-old job seeker turns in an application. Would you, as the owner of the company, want to know whether the young job seeker has a drunk driving conviction on his or her record?

We sure would. Unfortunately, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and state Democrats don't feel the same.

Buried in Doyle's budget is a proposal that would allow young adults up to age 25 to have some crimes expunged from their record, including some nonviolent felonies and some whose sentences carry maximum sentences of up to six years in prison. Under current state law, offenders under 21 years of age can have their misdemeanors cleared from public record.

Disappointingly, the policy is not being floated in front of the public and is instead tacked on to Doyle's proposed 2009-'11 budget. The proposal should be aired in the public forum. An issue that will affect young jobseekers, business owners and managers should be decided by a state-wide referendum.

The governor's proposal removes opportunity for lessons of personal responsibility. While young people are prone to making mistakes, the current expungement law allows for a perfectly fair grace period. We see no need to raise the age to which young adults can make poor choices without ramifications. Young people are aware of the law and its consequences. Facing those penalties can be difficult, but being the ages under consideration ourselves, we know that the toughest pills to swallow also teach the most important lessons. We fear that, given the power to erase past mistakes, young adults would abuse the privilege.

The state legislature's finance committee last week expanded the list of felonies ineligible for expungement, including physical abuse of a child, sexual assault of a child and stalking. Sadly, the same committee moved to keep the item in the state budget in a 9-6 vote. If state lawmakers cannot eliminate the proposal from the budget, we hope they continue pushing to disqualify more crimes from removal.

This proposal deserves the scrutiny of the public and should not have been embedded in the statewide budget. The policy is simply a bad one. It removes personal responsibility from young adults who know the law should learn to respect it.